Either way it shows the power of investing. You put your money into a stock /s and others do the rest of the work.

Or it shows the power of inflation ...

A coke is probably 2-3x more expensive today ...

If you’d bought £10k of 35p 330ml cans in 1997 you would now have £27k of coca-cola (95p).

Looking on ebay, if you varied your soda purchases to avoid flooding the market, you could likely sell them for far more as collectibles.

[yes, I realise that wasn't the point - I just find it fascinating how much people are paying for old soda cans]

That's way above the US inflation figures for food and beverages ($17k), and less even than US medical ($22k)

The pound inflated a little more on average, to £18k, but nowhere near that 95p inflation.

Coca-Cola is an outlier as it was affected by the sugar tax, and I’ve used post tax figures.

Now do housing and healthcare.

I did do healthcare - $10k becomes $22k. Housing $10k becomes $17k (rent is a little higher at $20k but housing in general brings it down)

That rent figure is based on "Raw Consumer Price Index data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for Rent of primary residence"

Clearly that can vary by city/state

You can even afford luxuries such as a porsche when you're 70 and nobody cares

What if you need money to live on during your year of retirement between 70 and dying at 71?

Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t track Warren Buffett’s actual performance very closely over shorter (less than a decade) periods. It was trading at nearly 2 times book value during that period, probably the worst time to buy it you could find.